Blue Colla Make Ya Holla (45 page)

“Same to you.” I gave him a sad smile and turned to leave. “Oh, Tommy…”

“Yeah?”

“She’s out there. You just have to keep your eyes open.”

“I will.”

It took close to an hour to wash Lisa off, and the life she was a part of went down the drain with her. I was done with this place; completely done. Even though I hadn’t quite met my goal, I’d find a way to do it. Maybe no one truly believed in me, but I wouldn’t give up on myself.

“Hey, Bruce,” I said as I walked into his office for the last time.

“Hey, Lisa.” The envelope he handed me was so thin I thought it might have been empty. “Here you go.”

I took it from him and tucked it in my bag without looking inside. “This is my last night.”

“I hate to see you go, but I had a feeling it was coming. You’re a good girl, and you deserve better than this life.”

“Will you mail my last check?”

“Sure thing, doll. I’m gonna miss you around here.”

“I’ll miss you, too.”

“Take care of yourself, all right? If you ever want to come back, don’t hesitate to call.”

“I will. Thank you for taking care of me for so many years. I’ll never forget it.”

With that, I left the building, feeling an odd mixture of sadness and relief that I would never be going back.

*

It had been
raining non-stop for days. Not just sprinkles either. The massive thunder storms were so loud that a few car alarms went off from the vibrations. Mother Nature must have decided to collect with interest on the beautiful weather she’d given us back in April. I didn’t have a new job, and I didn’t have enough energy to do anything about it. My existence had become nothing more than alternating between watching TV on the couch and reading in bed.

It was a week to the day after I’d walked out on my job, before I finally decided it was time to get up off of my ass. Both Carter and Lisa were gone, but Alissa was still there. I could still make something out of myself. After cleaning up and finding my umbrella, I headed in the direction I’d walked so many times before.

The trail through the park was muddy, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from my mission of applying for every job I could find along Main Street. When I neared the half-way point, I couldn’t help but notice the now-worn trail that lead to our—
my
—tree.

Without thinking about it, I followed the path I knew by heart until I was standing in the middle of the clearing. Memories of the time I’d spent there with Carter came rushing through my mind. I looked over to my tree, only to find that it too, was broken. The branch that had held my swing had snapped and was just barely hanging on by a few scraps of bark.

“I’m sorry,” I told my wooden friend. It was too far gone—
we
were too far gone, to be fixed. “I shouldn’t have weighed you down.” I walked away, wondering how long it would be before the piece of me that was barely hanging on broke off for good.

*

Even though I’d
been moving in slow motion, I’d still been productive. After applying for twelve jobs, I spent several hours at the library studying a few basic law textbooks. If I was going to start school in a couple of months, I wanted to be as prepared as I could be. It was also a good distraction.

On my way home, I saw Carter going into our building, wearing a police uniform. Seeing it for the first time made it even more real than it had been before. I hated how good he looked in it. Thankfully he hadn’t seen me, so I hid around the corner, like a coward, for a few minutes to make sure I didn’t run into him.

When I decided it was safe, I walked as quickly and as quietly through the building as I could. Just as I was almost up the stairs leading away from his floor, he called out to me. “Alissa, wait. We need to talk.” I hadn’t heard his door open, but I did hear it close as he moved toward me.

I stood in place on the second step from the top but didn’t turn to face him. “It’s too hard.”

“Please, I miss you. I know I fucked everything up, and I’ll do whatever it takes to get you back. I meant what I said; I’m in love with you.”

My throat constricted as the tears flowed freely from my eyes. A warm heat I’d know anywhere engulfed me as Carter came to a stop by my side.

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to believe. I can’t keep doing this.”

“I know, baby. I’m so sorry. I’d give anything to be able to go back in time and make it right. No matter what happens, my heart will always belong to you.”

The truth was, I’d missed him so much I thought it would kill me. Denying it was so much easier when he wasn’t standing right beside me. I nodded, and then ran the rest of the way up to my apartment.

Once in the safety of my home, I let myself cry for a little while and then began sorting through my life. For me to even consider getting back together with Carter, I couldn’t have anything to lose. There couldn’t be anything that he could take away from me.

My job had been my biggest weakness. Now that it was gone, I was pretty sure I was safe on that front. I pulled out my beaten-up laptop and started going through my finances. Still short of my goal, this period of unemployment, however brief, was not helping anything. Realizing I’d never opened the thin envelope Bruce had given to me the last night I’d worked, I dug through my bag until I found it.

The moment I began to open it, I could tell there wasn’t any cash inside. What I found, however, was much better.

Lisa,

Thanks for the memories. Call if you ever need anything. 310-555-2345

Thomas

Behind the note was a check for five thousand dollars, which was more than I needed to reach my goal. I was free. Now all I had left to figure out was if my heart could survive another blow from Hurricane Carter.

‡

C
arter kept his
distance, which I appreciated. He must have figured I would come to him when I was ready, assuming I would ever be ready. It had taken a few days, but my decision was made.

It was close to noon when I woke up with a runny nose and that icky feeling you get in your brain when you are coming down with a cold, but that wasn’t going to stop me. After a quick shower, I got dressed and headed down to the first floor.

After jabbing Carter’s doorbell for the third time, I was ready to give up. Just before I turned to leave, his across-the-hall neighbor, Mr. Pereira, came up behind me.

“He’s on days now,” was all the old man said before going back into his apartment and slamming the door. The man really was a treat.

When I returned home, I decided to be lazy. I curled up in my bed to read and ended up falling back to sleep.

Since I no longer had a job, I really should have started turning off the ringer on my phone. I was awoken from my six—holy shit—hour nap when my mother called and asked me for money. Apparently they were completely out of food and would starve to death if I didn’t help them this one last time. Even after my extended nap, I wasn’t feeling well enough to argue, so I caved. Since I needed to pick up some cold medicine anyway, I decided to buy actual food for them while I was at the store instead of handing over cash.

I drove to the grocery store closest to where they were currently parked so they couldn’t complain about warm milk or any other such bullshit. Maneuvering slowly through the aisles, I picked up enough staples to last them about a week, and then swung by the pharmacy before heading to the check-out lanes.

“Can I get the biggest box of twelve-hour Sudafed you have, please?” I asked the pharmacy technician. I grabbed one of the tissues from the courtesy box near the register and blew my nose. I was determined to keep my sinuses as clear as possible in hopes of nipping this thing in the bud.

“I need to see your ID, please,” she said with the smile of someone who’d had a rough day but was required to be polite anyway. I knew exactly how that felt. She swiped my driver’s license through a card reader attached to her monitor and then typed a couple of things into the computer. “Tap the box that says you agree to the terms and conditions and then sign in the rectangle right below it.” I picked up the stylus that was tethered to the credit card machine and signed the agreement that popped up on the screen. I then slid my debit card through the machine since I had to pay for the decongestant at the pharmacy counter. Before I left the health and beauty section to head for the front of the store, I grabbed a bottle of Advil and tossed it in my cart.

At the checkout line, I grabbed a travel-sized package of tissues from the display designed to suck all of the cash from the wallets of impulse shoppers and placed it onto the moving belt. I also grabbed a soda from the refrigerated case at the end of the lane. A few dozen annoying-as-hell beeps later, the teenage girl behind the register said, “That’ll be seventy-four forty.” A slide of my card trough the machine and a signature later, I was done. With the receipt in hand, I took the cart, that was now full of plastic bags, from the young kid who’d loaded it and headed for the car.

After transferring the shopping bags from the cart to my trunk, I pulled the small paper pharmacy bag from my purse and ripped it open. I gave the box containing the Sudafed the same treatment. The paper backing from the blister pack that was holding the cold medicine hostage put up one hell of a fight against my fingernails, so I ended up using a combination of my teeth and a pair of tweezers that I found in the bottom of my purse.

When one of the large white pills was liberated, I went on a search for his pain-killing friends. Of course, the Advil had to be in the grocery bag all the way in the back, which meant I had to dig through everything else before I found it, but at least the bottle was much easier to break into. I swallowed the medicine with a gulp of soda and then tossed the medicine into my purse.

Satisfied that I was sufficiently medicated for the time being, I got in the car and headed away from civilization. My parents still lived in the same RV I’d grown up in, but its location had changed many times over the years. Right now, it was just inside Indianapolis city limits, but still out in the middle of nowhere. They usually didn’t have a problem finding land owners who let them pay in trade.

Mom and Dad came outside just as I popped the trunk. The mess I’d made had shifted during the drive over, so there was hardly anything still in a bag. “What’s this?” Mom asked, looking over my shoulder.

“I figured I’d save you the trip since I had to go to the store anyway. There should be enough here to last a week.” The gears turning in her head as she tried to come up with a way to complain were almost audible. My impatience with them grew as I randomly shoved stuff back into the plastic bags. “After this runs out, you’re on your own. Like I told you before, I can’t afford to waste money on you. I’m also done putting up with your bullshit. I’m getting my life back on track, and I don’t need you holding me back.”

I didn’t offer to help them carry anything inside, as I never wanted to step foot inside their home-slash-factory ever again. Just as I handed them the final bag, a booming male voice scared the shit out of me.